


Dying, Leaving You

by animelaina



Series: A Second Chance, A Second Lifetime With You [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Avengers Tower, M/M, Multiverse, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 06:52:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13230306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/animelaina/pseuds/animelaina
Summary: Tony and Steve are at odds after Ultron, and Tony blames himself for what has happened. Steve blames him as well, and it hurts because Tony is secretly in love with Steve. Will he get a second chance to redo their experiences and get his happy ending with his Captain, or will he choose to walk away from Steve and prevent himself from getting hurt again?Suicide and anxiety mentioned, please don't read if you know you can't handle it!





	Dying, Leaving You

In the aftermath of Ultron, Tony was faced with glares and unhappy looks from his team mates at Stark Tower. People who he saw as family now gave him reproachful glances, especially with Wanda around. She moved into Stark Tower when she had nowhere to go after she lost her brother and her everything, and while Tony felt like it was the right thing to do, he did not want her around. The nightmares she planted in his head were just more ghosts that would never go away, more anxiety that would haunt his every footstep for the rest of his life.

God, he wished he could die already.

Bruce was missing in a Quinjet, and Thor had left to go back to Asgard and investigate the stones. Everyone else around seemed to be pushing him away and he would have been fine with being a lone wolf if it wasn’t for the fact that Steve seemed to never want him around as well.

_Steve. Steve fucking Rogers._

Whenever he thought of Steve’s shiny blond hair, his perfect build, his azure blue eyes, his altruism, his glittering All-American personality, his heart wrenched. The very person he wanted to protect, the very person he fell head over heels for was now looking at him as if he was a prisoner or some enemy of America. He sat on the chair of the bar counter holding his 4th cup of coffee, while his head rang as he hadn’t been able to get any sleep the entire night.

Every night was a terror for Tony. Whenever his eyes closed, he remembered Steve’s shield, broken on the ground. Shattered into halves just like his oh-so-fragile heart. He remembered Steve lying on the ground, empty glassy eyes staring into his own, those sapphire eyes that used to be so full of life, that used to radiate that warm gaze. His lips were slightly open, as blood trickled out of the corners. _“Why didn’t you do more?”_ The words rang out in his head. Tony wanted to, Tony tried, Tony would have done _anything in the world_ for his captain. The brunette desperately wanted to hold his body close, and cry his heart out but all he could do was sit next to him, taking in the view of Steve, the strongest man he ever knew, _dead_. The shock rendered him unable to move, as if he was frozen in place by a glacier of ice while the world crashed and burned all around him.

He would wake up with less than an hour of sleep, cold sweat dripping off his face buried in his hands, shaking uncontrollably. He hated panic attacks. He hated feeling like he couldn’t breathe, he hated it when the ghosts from his mind throttled him around the throat. He would stumble out of bed and wander to the workshop just to take his mind off the fears that tripled in volume when night fell, or sit at the bar counter and try to drown his thoughts out in alcohol. Being sober was awfully difficult.

The days weren’t any better – Wanda would walk past his workshop with a look of distaste etched all over her face, and say, “Building more robots to try and kill the world, Stark?”

Tony couldn’t even think of a sassy reply back, or ramble off with that fake confidence he always had. He wanted to tell her to just fuck off, honestly. Most of all though, he felt like he was the one that should fuck out of his own tower, because after all she was right. It was his fault her parents died. It was his fault Ultron got created, and no matter what intentions he had to save Steve, he had brought down doom on so many innocent civilians.

Tony hated himself.

No one else said anything much about Ultron, but it was clear that they thought the worst of him for it. They blamed him for it, and it hurt. He went to pour his 5th cup of coffee and stared listlessly at the drink trickling into his cup, mind too blank to even think about the Mark 42 design that he wanted to work on.

Steve walked into the communal area, fresh and early as he always was. That serious Captain America look on his face, with a slight sheen of sweat on his biceps along with a towel around his neck that indicated he just finished a morning workout. Tony glanced up and quickly looked away towards the skyline of Manhattan. It felt like he was hit in the gut by Mjolnir – he wanted to flee the room and hide in his workshop forever.

Steve would usually say ‘good morning’ followed by a bright smile on his face, but he just looked solemn as he took his breakfast and began making a sandwich on the bar counter for his own breakfast. Tony subconsciously ran his hand through his hair – he probably looked like a mess after a few nights of missing sleep, an unshaven messy beard, and bloodshot eyes. He got nervous and absently began to fidget with some gadgets he had in his pocket from the workshop, before he took out his tablet and called for FRIDAY to expand holograms of some designs he thought about into thin air. Steve ate his breakfast quietly, and the silence was deafening to Tony.

He wanted to ramble off as he usually did in the mornings, while Steve listened attentively and actually cared about what he said. After Loki tried to destroy planet Earth and they had a successful save-the-planet stint, his relationship with the Captain improved, and they progressed from superhero colleagues to friends who could talk about things other than saving the world and go out for casual meals, or late night drinks, talks, and movies. All that went to shit after Ultron though. They were back to less than 5 sentences in a day, just went Tony thought they might have progressed to a little more than friends.

Wanda walked in to the communal area, giving Steve a warm smile that turned stone cold when she saw Tony sitting at the bar counter as well. Sitting down on the chair next to Steve, she gingerly tapped her fingers on the table.

“Tony, maybe you should spend less time on engineering new things, look how tired you are,” she said easily. To Steve, it sounded like she like she cared about Tony’s wellbeing, but the malicious and smug smile she gave Tony revealed what she actually thought. She hated Tony for his inventions, wanted to pressure him into giving up his hobby which was his only saving grace now.

Tony dropped his cup onto the coffee a little harder on the table than he intended to, and chipped off the bottom of the porcelain cup with a loud clang. A small smithereen of the chipped glass cut his hand, and seemed to be embedded, but the pain was barely felt. At this point, physical pain was nothing compared to the mental hurt he went through everyday. His hand shook, and he stood up shakily. “I’ll just go work on something in the workshop,” he said unsteadily as he felt his voice cracking slightly and he did not want Steve to see him breaking down.

As he walked past, Steve grabbed his wrist in an iron grip, halting his footsteps. Tony stood there, trying to control his rapid breathing as his mind seemed to spiral down quickly into his abyss of ‘very bad thoughts’. He shook off Steve’s grip. He didn’t want Steve to feel how badly he was shaking. A tiny part of him was a little happy that Steve saw that he was upset, Steve wanted him to be there at the communal area, Steve wanted him to stay.

“How could you treat Wanda like that? It’s not like it’s her fault, you were the one who actually made Ultron. You’re being really rude, Tony, what the hell? Now you’re not even owning up to your own mistakes - I thought that maybe you were a better person than that, but clearly I was wrong, I can’t believe I actually - thought – maybe –,” Steve trailed off, a steely look in his eyes.

“I was never a good person, alright, lay off me with your goddamn righteousness. I try so fucking hard but it never goes right, and I know, I know I’m a fucking failure of a person and Ultron is all my fault. Do you know why I made Ultron?” Tony yelled. “I made Ultron because I had nightmares that _you died and you were very very dead right in front of my eyes and that tore my heart apart_ and I hate that you’re supporting the person who was the one who planted those images in my head and I couldn’t fucking bear to lose you, and I couldn’t bear to be unable to save you and lose the only person I ever loved with all of my heart –,” Tony stopped mid-sentence as he realised what he spilled as he lost control of his emotions. He felt like he wanted to cry but he couldn’t, he was so angry and upset and in so much pain all at the same time and he hated Steve Rogers.

 _I don’t want to be alive anymore,_ he thought _. How can I ever face him again after I just admitted to him how much I love him?_

Tony swallowed the lump in his throat. “Just fuck off, Steve, for fucks’ sake,” he snarled, before he left the room and took the elevator down to ground floor. I’m never going back to the tower. Anywhere but there.

“Sir, take a deep breath, Sir,” FRIDAY rang out in the lift. He ignored her.

Blinking back some tears that blurred his vision he walked out onto the street without thinking, and everything fell to chaos as he saw a white coloured Mercedes rushing towards him at high speeds.

The call for FRIDAY to send pieces of his suit flying to him and reconnecting to him barely manage to fall from his lips. He wasn’t sure if it was that he didn’t actually want to die, or that he called for his suit out of instinct.

In the face of death, time seemed to slow around him. Parts of the gauntlet connected to his right hand that he swung out in an instinctual moment, and the cold metal touched his warm fingers, giving him a meagre sense of relief. At the corner of his vision, he saw a figure running towards him, hand outstretched as if to pull him backwards away from danger. He knew who it was – he could and would recognise that blond hair glinting in the sunlight any day. He heard his name fall from the man’s lips – or perhaps it was a hallucination. Either ways, he was glad that he got to see Steve for the last time, even if Steve probably hated him for what he felt.

He closed his eyes, remembering a certain moment where Steve said, _“Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?”_ He had come back with a sassy reply, but Steve was right. He was nothing without the suit. Human. Mortal. Emotional. Dead from a simple car crash.

He wondered briefly if what Steve thought as he faced death was the same as what he felt when he saw Steve dead in his nightmares.

Probably not.

The car crashed straight into him as more pieces of the suit connected to him, and he blacked out, with his last thought being Steve Rogers.

**Author's Note:**

> AN: The Tony Stark feels are killing me. Anyway, the next part of the fic will be Tony's 'second lifetime', and he'll get to experience things with Steve Rogers all over again. And he's going to be filled with insecurities, as usual. Anyway, leave a kudos/comment if you liked it, and stay tuned for the next chapter!


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